Day 3-4: Unbelievable!!

Well I thought life would be interesting enough out here without all the craziness that happened yesterday. Our last day of training was pretty mundane. We had four straight hours of Excel, and in those four hours I only learned one thing. It's cool though. I'm sure for all the liberal arts kids from Harvard it was a great use of time. We also learned a bunch of stuff that I thought was useless (and I therefore didn't pay attention like I should have) and then came to the office today to find out that I needed to do exactly what I didn't listen to before. Woops. Good thing nobody else was paying attention!

So after training, they took us to a restaurant over in the City. On the way I met a life-long banker who just happened to ride the ferry and the bus with us. He was a really nice guy and was excited for me to be starting my career like he did so many years ago. This week is Fleet Week, which means that there are sailors everywhere. It's kind of weird.

The restaurant turned out to be a bar with food on the side. Everybody was drinking, and I got some pineapple juice. Pretty lame actually. I left and went home. I got to my apartment at about 8:30 and realized that I had left my key in the apartment. I live on the top floor and we're the only apartment on that floor. I figured that my roommate would be home in a while because he has always come home between 9 and 11 every night I've been here. I talked to Jenni Mae, read a book, and just waited for him to come home. I finally buzzed the door and went inside to get out of the cold. I walked up the stairs and waited outside our door.

And waited...

And waited...

And he never came home. SO on the night before I start for real in the bank, I pulled an all-nighter. Well, I did fall asleep for an hour or two just lying on the floor in the hallway, but I basically just sat there in the hallway all night long. My roommate never came home! He didn't answer his phone all night, and I still don't know what happened. It was crazy.

So at about 7am I just got up and went back to the bank. I got some breakfast and went to my desk and just waited for some people to show up.

There are six interns in my group, and they told us not to freak out if we didn't all get staffed right away. I walked around and met all of the analysts, then went back to my desk and started reading primers on MLPs, Oil & Gas, and Energy. After about two hours of that, I got an email saying that I had been put on a deal. I was the only intern that got on a deal today. It was pretty tight.

An SVP, Associate, Analyst, and I went into a conference room and the SVP basically laid out the book that we needed to put together. We talked about the company and what they are looking to do, and then that was it. He left to go fly to Sweden and we got to work. I was put in charge of about 10 slides and spent the rest of the day working on it. All the other interns went home at about 6:00 PM but I stuck around until about 10:30. I actually LOVE it. It's awesome to work on real deals and know that the work you're doing is going to be used in a presentation to the CEO in a few days. The resources available to you at a bulge-bracket bank are also amazing - you can really get anything you want. I have my own "Assistant" who basically can get me whatever I need as soon as I need it. It's great.

The other analysts in my group are really cool. Two of them in particular are pretty entertaining. One of them swears every time he speaks. It's almost unbelievable that someone can swear that much. He's really smart and helpful though, and did a lot to get things going for the interns. The other guy is basically just a baller. He's not cocky, but you know that he's a rock star.

I've come to learn that it's really important to network while you're here. I always kind of thought the game stopped when you got here, but the game just keeps on going. You have to be nice to the other interns, but deep down you know they're competition. I wonder if that's how it feels when you're full time and you're "competing" for a good bonus. Who knows.

Well it's been a LONG few days and it's already late here. I want to be the first intern in the office tomorrow and I'm hoping to finish up my work pretty quick so I won't have to come back over the holiday weekend. I really need to keep studying for the CFA too - it's in a few weeks!

Well the internship is going well after one official day. At least I can sleep in my own bed tonight.